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Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air: Legends
of West Texas Music
"Indeed, Oglesby's introduction of more
than two dozen musicians who called Lubbock home should be required
reading not only for music fans, but for Lubbock residents and
anyone thinking about moving here. On these pages, music becomes
a part of Lubbock's living history."
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Chris: So you began writing songs to in some way manifest what you were seeing around you; I mean, in your mind were you thinking, "I want to be a songwriter/musician, and Townes VanZandt will sing my songs some day," or was it just more of "an itch" you had in you?
Chris: To interact with the world, you mean? Butch: Well, just as an interface. The camera has helped me train my eye for seeing how things are operating, mainly people…in a pretty narrow sense; it's not all encompassing, but the camera was more of my intake. The songwriting has obviously been my major output. But there's a relationship to them all. It's all exploring with the eyes and the mind. "Why am I taking pictures of what I'm taking pictures of? What is it about this one little movement that that stranger made as I drove by at 70 miles an hour? Why did I snap that picture of that thing? What's going on in that little moment between when that person started to chase that dog away and when he actually chased him away?" Chris: Is that picture one you took where there's a
storm coming in and there's a Butch: Yea, it's actually a fire that was down close to Austin, near Bastrop. Chris: That picture is one of those moments of, "What's gonna' happen next?" Butch: Yea. And again, there are those "decisive moments" from Cartier-Bresson to the "extended moments" of Ansel Adams, kinda' more eternal. A rock doesn't move quite as fast…but the light changes, in a matter of seconds. Chris: And if you have the right light, you can see that mountain moving, almost. In the mountains of California, you can really almost see that continental upsurge, and you think, "Oh, Man! That thing is going!" Butch: You got it! That's it! Chris: Interesting. Talking about the mountains, and getting us back to that "environment" thing, trying to bring it back to Lubbock; Because you don't have in Lubbock those moments of "watching a mountain move," or "going down to watch the river flow by," and it is more like taking in a square acre of dirt that is your backyard, does that stimulate the desire for that creative process? Jimmie would say, I think, that it is probably erroneous to start pointing out that there are "a lot of creative people" from Lubbock. But there really are a lot of people from there who have decided that it was important enough to them that they stuck with it. There are, obviously, a lot of creative people everywhere. But I guess I'm saying, there are a lot of people from Lubbock who have decided that they want to be "weird enough" to make a life like that. I guess what I'm saying sociologically is that, "You gotta be weird to want to be a songwriter." Butch: I think somewhere we got our hearts tied to the "Question Mark, The Great Mystery of the Universe." Because of that, everything is part of making that connection, whether I was settin' up there on the tractor, watching each little clod getting turned over by the disk behind the tractor, and watching how suddenly it became a whole row of dirt a half mile long, each clod made up of little grains of sand, and suddenly you're into The Universe; you're into the whole scale of everything, right there in a little pile of dirt. It's the universe in a grain of sand; Everything is everywhere - anywhere, at all times. Chris: Right. And you can see that anywhere. Like down around Terlingua where you live now, when I've been down to that Big Bend area I've been struck by how it's a desert but it is just stunning how much is going on out there!
That's like the old Tom T. Hall observation of, "Some people can fly around the world and not see anything, and some people can walk around the block and see everything." That was the one brilliant thing he said about songwriting. I read his book and…Well, I've got this theory that nobody knows how they write songs. They can talk around it and about it but nobody knows how they really write a song and where it comes from. Chris: I really like the poem you have in the liner notes of the album Own The Way Over Here, where it says, "It ain't in the glass..." I love that poem because I think I had those exact thoughts sitting by myself in Lubbock. Butch: Yea. Every once and awhile we have to rip the mask off so we can put on a new one. I think the answers to The Question Mark are always behind the Forms. Forms attract us but no form is the answer. It's always hidden. Chris: Going with this, when you were talking about
going out and spotting these particulars; Is the theory sort
of like, "The more perfected we get in America at seeing
these Aristotelian details, that's helping us get to those Platonic
forms?" Getting there into that space in between 'em? Butch: That's the best stuff! Chris: Well, I like it. Butch: So what are you asking? Chris: I don't know. I think I was just going with an idea. We were talking about "The Road," and picking up particulars in a rapid way. We've learned the Sun comes up every day, and now some us know how to operate these tape recorders. [Laughs] Is that useful for us as people in getting closer to those forms? Butch: Closer to "The Essence," not closer to "The Forms." You're already close to all the forms you can possibly imagine, and there'll be more of 'em. Chris: Yea, you're right in the middle of 'em. Butch: So in seeking to get closer to the Essences, well…Yea, of course! The answer is, "Yes!" Chris: It is just a function of "Seeking for that," I guess. Butch: See, as you were starting your question I was thinking, "Well, the question is useless," and then when you finished the question it was not useless because you said, "in so far as reaching for those forms, or the essences." See: Always test anything and everything in relationship to an aim, to a purpose; Because without that, it's just idle chatter. Chris: Right. [Laughs] And the only thing I can think to respond with is getting going in that direction. Do you want to talk about any particulars of your history? Butch: Those are what I tend to ignore the most. Sure, they're things that I have to draw upon to continue exploring, but they're insignificant as far as whatever they are. Chris: What would you say are some significant moments in your life, that could have nothing to do with your career, etc.? Butch: I just said, "It's all insignificant," those things. The significance is in everything. Obviously, there are "turning points," so called "high points," this and that. Like sitting out there on a tractor for a year was an amazing, amazing turning point in my life; the time to sit and contemplate and connect a lot of these ideas. That came along at a time when I was really getting into a lot of the metaphysics of life. You gotch'ur physics and you gotch'ur metaphysics. Once you kinda figger out the difference between physics and metaphysics, then the rest of your life is just kinda puttin' them together and seeing how things operate; exploring and pushing one place here or there, seeing how…testing the physics, and testing the metaphysics. That's what it is. Chris: Observing that flow, I think you're talking about, is one important step of it. Because I think that as soon as you think you've mastered it and it's static, that's when it starts falling apart. Butch: You're in trouble, yea. Chris: That's why, I think, that testing process is important. Since I was a child, I've always found my self doing that: Being very certain of certain things but always willing to chink around the edges and figger out where that's wrong, or maybe not. Butch: That leads me to something that I think all of us have tried to do is, "Look for the exceptions." Because it's in finding the exceptions to these conclusions which we've drawn that teaches us the next level of conclusion. In other words, conclusions are steps for getting further down the road; they're temporary. Chris: I like that: "Conclusions are temporary." Butch: So seeking those exceptions and trying to see how they fit allows you to develop a more accurate generalization, a more accurate principle. Chris: A better map of the territory. Butch: A more accurate understanding, yea. And, y'know, the human race, as such, may not be making that much progress but here and there progress is made, and we've been able to record the progress that's been made enough that we've seen a tremendous amount of understanding has come along. We can either embrace that or ignore it. If you ignore what so many people have spent so much of their lives discovering and working hard to uncover one little amazing piece of understanding, then you're kinda cuttin' yourself out of a lot of opportunity of taking it on to greater understanding. Chris: As far as the question that we were talking about earlier, the utility of that - being human: Somebody else observed that - if all the animals and plants and everything in our environment all have their unique function to make it all work; they all do something to make it go; they eat the crud or breath the carbon dioxide or whatever - that if people are unique in any way among the group of animals, it's the fact that humans have this ability to use this "group-mind" thing to pass along knowledge over a long period of time, that other animals don't really have the ability to do. Butch: That's our only special ability. Chris: Yes. And if you're right, then that should be something we're pursuing; seeking "God" or whatever that wholeness is; Truth. Butch: It should be our passion instead of our aversion. Chris: I think that maybe one common thing among all the musicians and artists is a "seeker-ness" that is coming from West Texas; I think, maybe because some of the community hasn't been very sympathetic to that type of activity, then it involved some sort of dedication to that seeking, a dedication to that path that is required to follow in order to get to some of those things. Butch: People have laid out the idea before that too much specialization is what causes extinction, because the environment changes. It will change, and if you're not adaptable you perish. Humans don't have anything that makes then specially adapted for changing situations, but they do have that ability to collect useful information and pass it on. Chris: I like where this is going. Let me try to bring
up some more factual particulars Butch: Around 1990, I rented it as a place to have some working space downtown; I had decided to live downtown in Austin, to see what it was like to be right in the middle of all the insanity for awhile. Chris: So it was a semi-open gallery space for you? Butch: It became a space where we could have performances or large art shows. We did everything from dance performances to musical performances, art exhibits and so forth. Then Barbara Grossman who worked for me for 6 years, pretty much all of that time, took it over when I left Austin. She moved it up farther north in town and kept it to sell books and T-shirts and tapes. Chris: There certainly is a large expatriated Lubbock community in Austin. I really noticed that after moving here. In fact, it wasn't until after I moved here that I learned about a lot of the musicians from the Lubbock area who have had a rather large impact on the Austin music scene. With Austin being known now as "The Live Music Capital of The World," can you talk about how that community of Lubbock artists has affected the growth of this Austin music scene? Butch: The fact of the State government being here,
because the lawmakers always seemed to require that there be
plenty of bars around, so there were plenty of places to go to
pick. And it was that time in America when old folk music was
moving into the popular realm; and there was already Country
music and Rock-n-Roll, had a big initial explosion in the 50's
& 60's. So at the end of the 60's when America was splitting
apart and going kinda nuts for a couple of years there, Austin
was definitely a radical place. The students where trying to
figure out, "What's going on in America? Hey, Stop! Let's
wait a minute and figger this all out." It was the collision
of the cultures that was destined to happen. The cowboys loved
Country music; all the crazy hippies loved good, old Country
music and self-made, home-made music. Chris: So it was just a good place for y'all to jump into what you were wanting to do anyway. Butch: Yea. Jimmie and Joe and Angela Strehli had already been down here living; some of the Lubbock people had moved to Austin because it was a great climate with hills and rivers and places to swim. Lubbock was harsher, and Lubbock was hard to play your music in. And suddenly there's a place to where you could play music and bring home a few bucks at the end of the day. Chris: A good marriage of those communities. Butch: There was literally a triangle between Lubbock, Austin, and California - both L.A. but more San Francisco; destinations, stopping off places where you could settle down for a few days, weeks, or months. Chris: It seems like people were a lot more like what we would call "homeless" these days. Butch: Yea. But it wasn't really like "homeless;" It was like we had "lots of homes." I think that's real different. We all had homes but not necessarily any particular house. We all had lots of couches and floors where we could sleep. We had lots of friends. There was a freedom of showing up any hour of the night and you were welcome. Everybody might be sleepy and grumpy, but you were welcome. Chris: Getting back to Lubbock, do you think that's unique? I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to confess being prejudiced on this subject. I think there is something with the idea of "West Texas friendly." I've lived in California, both Northern and Southern California, and it is always a major relief to return to Lubbock where people will actually sit and have a conversation with you for awhile, as opposed to being interested in how what you're doing affects them and then going back to their own business. Do you think that's a strength of this community of artists or do you think that's irrelevant? Butch: I think that's a very powerful thing for people who are involved in a community like that. But it's also a worldwide thing. There are people like that all over the planet. We've run across them over the years, wonderful folks. The idea of "You're all welcome here, too.' But Lubbock is, probably as a general rule, a friendlier place than lots of other places in the world. Chris: I wasn't really trying to get down on other communities. But I like that idea of a community of people working together and supporting each other in that work. Of course, that isn't unique to Lubbock. But it is out there. Butch: We build circles of friends throughout our lives.
Sometimes we leave those We're all so identified by our individuality, but what is
an individual anyway? It's made up of everybody he or she has
ever met. We're really more of other people than we are of ourselves.
Because what is our Self? What is that? It's how you've embraced
everything and everyone; that's what turns you into what appears
to be an individual. [Laughs] Chris: I think an interesting pattern that humans get into - getting back on the subject of Lubbock - The community out there seems to have manifested itself in a very dualistic way, such as "Inside or Outside," the judgmental type - which are everywhere. But growing up in Lubbock, I think people are really aware of that perception of duality; of "Good & Bad," a Right Way and a Wrong Way to do things, a right way to have your hair, a right way to say this or that prayer…Where I'm going with this is I wanted you to comment on a quote I once saw attributed to you: "We all grew up in Lubbock with two things pounded into our brains from the day we were born. One is, 'God loves ya' and he's gonna send ya to hell.' The other is 'Sex is dirty and evil and nasty and filthy and sinful and bad and awful, and you should save it for the one you truly love'." Butch: Contrast exists in everything; otherwise you
wouldn't be able to differentiate anything. That is maybe slightly
different from the classical idea of "duality" but
duality is part of the Universe. We only learn by contrast. Chris: Interesting. Maybe there's hope for the Twenty-first Century. Butch: Absolutely! I keep referring to Bucky Fuller because I've been reading him a whole lot lately again, after all these years, but regarding the complementariness… I think partly how a lot of the musicians wound up in nearness to each other in the same community was the process of being pushed out…"Counter-balance" is the word I'm looking for - a Counter-balancing effect. "When everybody else goes to that side of the ship, I'm gonna go back over here to this side because that's gonna be the side that is above the water." Chris: Yes! I like that! Butch: Humans, in their "robotic mode," have this incredible tendency to go in the wrong direction from what they're looking for. So a lot of times you can just watch where everybody is headed and if you just go the opposite direction you may find what they're all looking for. Chris: Somebody once said that, "It's not progress when you continue to go forward if you're going in the wrong direction." Butch: And here comes in another general principle; that "Direction does have something to do with it all." Aim or Purpose is an essential part of what we're about. Because without that reference, the way you measure things may just be on whims. Your stomach may determine everything for you for a day or two. If your aim is clear, you can go - literally - weeks without eating. Chris: That is one thing I've been finding a lot of in this whole story; This concept of what I've been calling "dream-crafting;" Coming up with an idea or an intent and knowing why you have that idea and following the flow of those patterns in trying to make it come to reality. Because there is that concept of, "If we exist for any reason, it must be to execute that unique process." That's all we're good at. Butch: The image I like to use is more like a "Magnetization
process." Once you detect a glimpse of that place which
lies right behind the Question Mark, you want everything to apply
to revealing what that little glimpse was, so only what is magnetized
toward that is allowed to stick to you. Chris: Like water-dowsing? Butch: Very similar! All the words and phrases that don't fit, won't stick to it. Chris: Exactly! I do know what you're saying. Butch: It all makes sense somewhere. I think the wonderful
thing is that our minds have the ability to intuit all of what
we've been talking about. It doesn't necessarily have to be spelled
out precisely. Every once in awhile it's nice to make it a little
obvious to yourself and try to delineate it a little better;
but you don't have to do that all the time everyday. You need
to move back out into the ocean to get the work done. If that's
a reasonable idea, it applies all the way across everything.
What I'm saying is, "You gotta leave your work sometimes,
in order to really get it done." You gotta' do something
like chop some firewood or dig a ditch, skin your knuckles a
little bit. Chris: My theory is that, "It's a really sad day when the best part of waking up really is Folgers in your cup." Butch: That's a goodun'. Chris: I don't see how we can say any more than that. Let's stop there. Butch: That was fun.
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